Hardly Doom and Gloom. I apologize if it sounded like I was implying the game will die -- it will not.

What I am suggesting is that this type of prize kit formula very much hurt Horrorclix -- where of my players simply bought what they wanted. Yes, they still came to HorrorClix tournaments, but they didn't feel compelled try very hard to come to them since they already bought the prize. As such the tournament scene never took off in any sense of the word.

There's alot to be said about having an LE prize that isn't available to anyone until week 8. That adds a certain excitement to the game and energizes players.

And as I said before, the LE's being packed in the boosters seriously harmed the tournament scene a few years ago...

-The Le

They are putting the responsibility of approved play in the hands of the venues. The prize support won't be worth that much on the secondary market so prize sharks lose interest. For the people that want to play and have fun they still get something if that is important to them. No more reporting more players than came to the venue to get more prize support. No more signing up for multiple events to try and get a figure in the mail. I think that there are far more benefits to this than is being realized by some of us. It takes a whole mess of issues and eliminates them. It makes the tournament scene more about fun. I feel like I've repeated myself three times on this thread.

I wouldn't consider myself a prize shark, I just like to win. I don't care about the prize most of the time and will usually give it away or trade it for not much at the venue. If I do keep it I trade it or sell it on here. I'll just say that even if the prize is worth a nickel, I'm still going to come out and play. I think most "prize sharks" probably would too. I mean, they have to like the game somewhat in order to play. Will you see as many stories of people who drive to like 5 venues in a weekend that are hours apart from each other? Probably not, but I still think you will see the uber-competitive people come out for sure.

Also - I think this will actually reduce the amount of "crooked venues." In the past there were venues getting prize support and not running tourneys and just getting rid of the prizes. If all venues have access, and these prizes will be in abundance, most of these venues will probably not waste their time in buying these prize sets and trying to turn a profit.

It was much easier for them to do so when the product was sent to them free on a weekly basis.

This is good news, just wish we had some heroclix tournaments were I live. If anyone knows of any in the Baton Rouge area, let me know!

This has always been a bad idea. In general Venue Owners aren't interested in running these style of games or have any interest to. Sure, it's easy for them to turn over the reigns to the judge that's been running the tournaments up to now, but this was before Wizkids started charging for the prizes.

It's really a double problem: (1) Giving everything upfront with no rules will saturate the marketplace and hurt the tournament scene, and (2) charging for the prize kits, when the retailer costs have already gone up.

Also, Free Comic Book Day is a poor example, as that is an industry wide event who's ultimate goal is to bring in new long-term customers to the store / comic industry.

I am actually okey with Wizkids trying out this prize-kit model once, but it's going to hurt the HeroClix brand in the long run. It won't kill it, but it will hurt it.

-The Le

Well this just means I will have to attempt to get all the prize support on the secondary market. It took me forever to get our venue to run tournaments and it was a constant headache trying to keep them on top of the "free" prize support.

Now that they will have to pay for it, basically means that since there would be only 2 players that might play (and could afford to buy the new set), they won't be bothered to purchase anything let alone try and set up tournaments for us.

So if anyone wants to work out deals to sell or trade me the OP kits, let me know, otherwise see you all on Evilbay.

I don't think this will hurt the tournament scene, If you have trouble bringing people for prizes they don't want do what we did, charge a nominal entry fee (like 3$) and then give away boosters based on how many people show up. I have been doing that for years and its been great, people love getting boosters,


I like the Idea of the purchasable prize kits but i also think they should be slightly limited, like 2-4 per store, that way its not to over distributed


edit:

Our group has been quite fortunate, we are a group of 6 that has survived a long time, and we will probably continue how we were going after tournaments dropped from 12-15 down to us 6, we have a friends apartment we play at and a store that we buy from, granted during ap we went to the store for the tournies, but now that we can just buy the prize kits we will probably continue playing at home and forget dealing with loud smelly YuGiOh kids

Seems fairly similar to what Horrorclix did. Not exactly the same, but it still has the "you can run pretty much whatever you want" vibe.

Prize kit cost? $18

Split among 2 players and 1 judge? $6 each

Seriously. Tell your venue owner to order the kit and give him the money for it. Run your tournaments as normal. Everyone's happy.

I still could care less how they do the initial OP. I am still really happy they are going to have it this soon, I thought it would take months before we saw any sort of AP program. I believe they will probably tweak things after this initial run of OP. Rather than wonder if it is going to succeed or what venues will do with the prize support, I'm going to actually enjoy the fact that after a year of all this waiting we finally have a new owner, a new set, and freaking AP coming in less than 2 months. That should be more than enough for any pessimists out there.

I might be able to sell that idea to one of the employees that helps schedule tournaments. Trying to sell that to the owner, impossible. Tried doing that with previous prize kits. This is the same owner who barely gave us a 10% price break on bricks and cases.

Here's to hoping.

Seconded. I think this is a really good thing. I think the pros far outweight the cons. Keep in mind that it is just something people may not be used to. When things change people get upset at first. Give it a chance and see how well it works. There was a number of complaints with the old system.

It's pretty darn close to the entire thing actually.

Great idea for them to follow.

I'm not 100% sure where I read it, but I thought Neca was doing it this way for HoT only and starting with the next set it would revert to the old style. Something about not having enough time to put together OP. Does anyone else remember anything like this?

...ooooorrrrrr.....A smart venue could make sure they have plenty of everything to go around, and run boucoup sealed tournaments.....


..ooooooorrrrrrr.... A smart venue could make sure they have plenty of everything to go around, and charge, say, $5 as a chair rental fee for tournanments for months and make a few dozen times their up front costs, not to mention incidental sales